Read Chapter 20: The Dead Tell a Memory

The psychic’s parlor smelled of dust and dried lavender, the kind of place that pretended to be timeless but was really just old. Julien sat across from a woman whose face was a roadmap of wrinkles, her eyes milky with cataracts that he suspected were as performative as the crystal ball between them. Claire stood by the door, arms crossed, her temple still pink with the ghost of her earlier wound.

“You brought the hair,” the psychic said. Not a question.

Julien placed the small envelope on the table. Inside was a single strand, black with a streak of grey, his father’s. The antique dealer had charged him seventy euros for the discovery, a bargain considering what it might unlock. Or what it might cost.

“I need to speak to him,” Julien said. “Raymond Moreau.”

The psychic’s fingers hovered over the envelope. She didn’t touch it, just let her hand tremble above the paper like a bird deciding whether to land. Then she looked at Claire, then back at Julien.

“You understand what you’re asking? The dead don’t come when called. They come when they’re ready. And sometimes they bring things with them.”

“I’m ready.”

She wasn’t talking about ghosts. Julien knew it. The Souvenirist faction that traded in memory had its own rules, its own hierarchies, and this woman—who called herself Mireille—was a different branch from the Pale Man’s crew. He’d learned that much from the underground network Claire’s historian had introduced them to. The Souvenirists weren’t one cult. They were a family of scavengers, all circling the same corpse of forgotten Paris, each with their own ritual for picking the bones.

Mireille opened the envelope with surprising delicacy, pinched the hair between thumb and forefinger, and held it to her lips. She whispered something Julien couldn’t catch—a name, maybe, or a prayer—then set the strand in a brass dish and lit it with a match.

The smell was sharp, brief. A single curl of smoke rose, twisted, and seemed to hang in the air longer than physics should allow.

Mireille’s eyes rolled back. Her body jerked once, violently, then went slack. When she spoke, her voice was deeper. Rougher. Not hers.

“Julien.”

The sound of his own name in his father’s cadence hit him like a fist to the sternum. He gripped the edge of the table. Claire stepped forward, alert.

“Papa?”

“You found the watch. Good. Good boy. I knew you would.” The voice was strained, as if speaking through water. “But you haven’t opened it. Not fully. There’s more.”

“I found the map. The Rue des Morts. The name Élodie. What does it mean?”

A laugh, dry and bitter, rattled out of Mireille’s thin chest. “Élodie. She thought she could build the door herself. Foolish girl. The door was always there. They just needed someone to remember it.”

“Remember what? Papa, who is she? What is the Second Paris?”

The psychic’s body convulsed. Her hands clawed at the table, nails scratching deep grooves into the wood. When she spoke again, her voice was fractured, barely a whisper.

“Find the blue door in the garden of bones. Behind the hospital. The garden that remembers. Bring the watch. It’s the key—the only key—and they will kill you for it. They will kill you for her. They will kill you for me.”

His father’s voice broke, and for a moment Julien heard something else beneath it—a sound like water filling a stone throat. Then Mireille screamed. Her body arched backward, chair tipping, and Julien lunged to catch her before she cracked her skull on the floor.

She came to gasping, pupils huge, chest heaving. For a long moment she stared at the ceiling, trembling, her lips moving around words that wouldn’t form. Then she turned her head and looked at Julien with an expression that was no longer mystical. It was terrified.

“He’s still down there,” she rasped. “Your father. When I touched him, I felt it. He’s not dead the way you think. They keep pieces of him. Pieces of all of them. The Second Paris is built from what they took.”

“Taken? Who takes them?”

“The Collectors. The ones who came before. The first Souvenirists.” Mireille sat up slowly, her hands shaking as she pressed them to her temples. “They didn’t start collecting death. They started collecting lives. Memories. Moments. They built the city below from everything they stole from the world above. Every forgotten street, every lost soul, every dream that died—it all goes there. That’s what the door is for.”

Claire’s voice cut through the thickening air. “She’s not a psychic, is she? You’re one of them.”

Mireille looked at Claire, then nodded slowly. “I was. A long time ago. But I left because I saw what they do with the memories they gather. They don’t keep them to remember. They keep them to feed.”

Julien’s wrist throbbed. He looked down; the bandage was dark, soaking through again. The wound pulsed in rhythm with the slow beating of his heart, and he swore he could feel something moving beneath the skin, something that recognized the name Mireille had just spoken.

“Feed what?” he asked.

Mireille’s eyes dropped to his wrist. She stared at the red stain spreading through the fabric, and her face went pale. “You’ve been touched by the garden,” she whispered. “You’ve been marked. When did that happen?”

“The corpse. In the water, days ago. I cut myself on her teeth.”

Mireille’s lips pressed into a thin line. She stood abruptly, swept the envelope from the table, and shoved the dead hair back into Julien’s palm. The strand was grey now, ash-colored, brittle.

“The blue door won’t open for you if you’re already one of them,” she said. “It opens from the inside. You’d be walking into their territory carrying their infection on your skin. They’ll smell it on you the moment you approach.”

“Then I’ll cut it out.”

“It’s not in the wound anymore. It’s in the blood.” Mireille grabbed his wrist, squeezed hard enough to make him wince. Her fingers dug into the bandage, and Julien felt the wound open wider, fresh blood hot against his skin. “Listen to me. You think you’re chasing your father. You think this is about finding him. But he’s not there to be found. He’s there to be kept. And if you open that door, you won’t be walking in as a rescuer. You’ll be walking in as a offering.”

She released him. Julien staggered back, clutching his wrist. Claire was at his side in an instant, steadying him, her hand firm on his shoulder.

“Then what do we do?” Claire asked, her voice hard. “If the door is a trap, we don’t go through it.”

Mireille shook her head slowly, her milky eyes fixed on the window, on the grey Paris light filtering through dirty lace. “You don’t have a choice. The infection is already spreading. You have three days, maybe less, before you start seeing things that aren’t there. Before the garden starts seeing through your eyes. The door is the only way to cut the thread. But you won’t be going in alone. They’ll be waiting.”

“Who?”

“The Pale Man. His faction. And others you haven’t met yet.” Mireille turned, her face unreadable. “The dead tell what they know, Julien. Your father told you where to go. But he didn’t tell you what he was. Why they took him. Why they keep him. That’s what you need to find out. And the garden will tell you—if it doesn’t kill you first.”

She opened the door to her shop, a gesture of dismissal. Outside, the street was quiet, damp with a fine morning drizzle. Julien looked down at the bandage on his wrist. It was soaked crimson now, the wound no longer a gash but something more deliberate, the skin around it beginning to blacken at the edges.

“Three days,” he repeated.

“Three days,” Mireille confirmed. “Go to the garden of bones. Behind the old hospital on Rue de la Santé. You’ll know it when you see it. The trees grow in rows there. The dead keep them company. And the blue door—when you find it, don’t knock. It knows you’re coming.”

She shut the door. The lock clicked. And somewhere in the walls of the old building, Julien could have sworn he heard a voice—his father’s voice—singing a nursery rhyme he hadn’t thought about in twenty years.